Populism and The Danger of Illusion

Abstract

We are living in a time of increasing economic inequalities, disaffection, and fear of powerlessness of global proportions. The response is isolationism, nationalism, and paranoia of what is foreign and other. Fantasies of returning to a time of greatness and supremacy are propounded by politicians in the face of facts. Knowledge and expertise has been corrupted and only emotions tell the truth. The allure of a fantastic leader who offers to “fix” it all is irresistible. The denigration of thought, as we have witnessed throughout history, opens the way to an absolutist, fascist state of mind; reality must conform to fantasy. Is this the start of an era of paranoia? And will the real enemy be the failure to think? This article explores how this political dynamic is implicitly sanctioning the enactment of alt-right fantasies and the serious consequences of a leadership that denies loss and change.

Keywords:

• populism
• inequality
• autocracy
• anxiety
• ego ideal
• illusion

Notes

1 Mishra points to Voltaire as one of the first influential proponents of the affluent society in his publication of “Le Mondain” in 1736. In extolling the virtues of the good life, Voltaire argued that affluence was a legitimate political and economic goal (Mishra, 2017, pp. 82—83).

2 A recent poll of millennials in developed and developing countries shows that young people in developing countries are “far happier than in the west: 90 per cent of Indonesians and 78 per cent of Nigerians said they were happy compared with just 57 percent in Britain and France” (Pota, 2017). Is this difference because developing countries are on the way up, whereas developed countries have reached their limit?

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Coline Covington

Coline Covington, Ph.D., holds a B.A. in Political Philosophy from Princeton University, an MPhil in Criminology from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the London School of Economics. She worked for nearly 10 years as a consultant with criminal justice agencies throughout England and set up the first UK mediation project between victims and juvenile offenders with the Metropolitan Police in London. She is a training analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology and the British Psychotherapy Foundation and former chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council as well as a fellow of International Dialogue Initiative (IDI), a think tank formed by Professor Vamik Volkan, Lord Alderdice, and Dr. Robi Friedman to apply psychoanalytic concepts in understanding political conflict. From 2011 to 2013, Coline was Visiting Research Fellow in International Politics and Development at the Open University and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Her publications include Terrorism and War: Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence (Karnac, 2002); Shrinking the News: Headline Stories on the Couch (Karnac, 2014); Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2015); and Everyday Evils: A Psychoanalytic View of Evil and Morality (Routledge, 2016). She is in private practice in London.